I don't like walking around this old and empty house.

[the_marshal]

WHO| Wyatt and Semi-OTA (Open physically to anyone with him in District 10, with some preset threads for Howard and Max in the comments.)
WHAT| Bb gets with the times.
WHERE| District 10
WHEN| A day or two after arriving in the Districts.
Warnings/Notes| Some mild swearing perhaps? Edit: Two clueless gents flirting over the skype equivalent below. You are warned. Edit edit: It went a bit beyond flirting. Gird yourself.



Wyatt had made a promise to Howard, and he was determined to keep it. After settling in as best as he could in their temporary housing, he dug out his communicator and set about trying to get the thing to work.

At one of the heavy, thick-cut tables in the dining room, he moved his fingers over the keys just as he remembered watching Howard do -- and somehow set off a bell, a shrill alarm that cut through the quiet of the late morning like a knife through warm butter. Quickly, he clapped his hands over it and stabbed another button, managing to silence it out of sheer luck.

Glancing around, he nodded in apology to those at the nearest tables - trying to ignore the heat threatening to curl around the back of his neck - and tried again.

That time he nearly blinded himself.

Wiping the bright flash from his eyes, cursing lowly to himself, he dropped the device on the table and leaned back in his chair in defeat.

Time to consider a re-approach.

Comments

[the_marshal]

Wyatt leaned back in his chair, shoulders hitting the wood back, struck dumb with surprise. He kept his hold on the communicator simply out of habit, the device hovering above his lap.

"What happened to ya - Charles?"

He tried to piece it together in his head. Orc, as he had been, had returned from the arena, he was certain of that. Even if he hadn't seen him in passing - which he had - the evidence was all over the suite, the liquor cabinets empty when he'd gone to soothe his sorrows after his fight with Max.

He'd heard the boy had gotten into some trouble - which he'd understood only too well, hearing he'd gotten mixed up in a scuffle with Aunamee - did that mean the Capitol had done this? ...Why?

How?

[callmecharles]

That made his stomach clench up. He wasn't sure how much he could...or should say.

"I tried to kill Aunamee...to protect Howard." He managed to get that much out but it sent sickening chills through him.

"The Capitol fixed me...made me how I was before I died." He managed looking a little pale at the repressed memory. That was all he could really bring himself to say on the matter.

[the_marshal]

Wyatt was silent for several long moments, watching Orc's - Charles' - face as he spoke. The confusion and surprise easing by fractions as understanding won out.

He couldn't blame him for what he'd done to Aunamee. Not only had he once done the same, but he had succeeded, twice now, inside the arena. He wasn't one to judge.

"Well... congratulations, son. I hope it works out for ya."

First R, now Orc... was the Capitol going to make all the alien tributes human?

[callmecharles]

Orc's frown deepened at the congratulations.

"I screwed up though." He tried to explain. "Again." He added shamefully.

"I couldn't protect Howard from him in the arena...and I couldn't even kill him when I had him in my hands." He held up his now human hands to continue his point.

"They'll just patch him up again and he'll get to Howard again."

[the_marshal]

Wyatt shifted and the chair across from him moved, pushed out by one of his boots. An invitation for Orc to sit.

If anyone understood that particular failing, it was Wyatt.

"Ya ain't alone there, son," he sighed, sitting up in his seat again, hunching forward under the weight of his past shortcomings. "I've been tryin' for so many arenas now... an' it jus' ain't ever enough."

[callmecharles]

Orc took the seat feeling a bit awkward. It was like trying to have an actual conversation with a teacher or something. And now that he was only a large teenager instead of a large rock monster, it was a little more intimidating.

"What's wrong with that guy?" He wondered out loud "I mean...some people are monsters sure but...there's gotta be a reason right?" After all other then Drake he'd never met someone who was just evil for the sake of being evil.

[the_marshal]

"He likes it," Wyatt replied, with all the conviction of someone who truly believed what he was saying. "He enjoys the killin'. The idea that he's better than somebody else, that he can decide when an' where somebody dies."

The man thought he was God.

[callmecharles]

That made Orc shudder.

"The last guy who I met like that had a tentacle whip for an arm and couldn't die. Like...you'd chop him up and he'd just grow back."

A pause and a sad far away look "I was supposed to keep everyone safe from him too but he made me mad, I screwed up and he escaped."

[the_marshal]

"I killed him, the last two arenas," Wyatt told him, hands tightening on the communicator, knuckles whitening. "In the desert... I thought it was done. He didn't come back...."

He trailed off, a muscle jerking hard in his jaw.

"Point is, ya ain't the only one."

[callmecharles]

"Yeah, but I couldn't even do it in the Capitol." which as far as Orc knew was supposed to be more permanent.

"Someone on the TV there...they said people like what he does with Howard." He sounded confused and sickened by it.

"What can we do?"

[the_marshal]

"So did I," he murmured, a low confession, head tipping up enough for the sharp blue eyes to meet Orc's.

He held Orc's gaze for a moment, then exhaled, sighing through his nose.

"He can't do nothin' out of the arena either, so we jus' need to worry 'bout keepin' Howard safe inside. Ya know the truth about him now, so ya know not to trust him. An' if I see him, I'll kill him."

It should have been strange - should have been upsetting how easy it was becoming to say. But it wasn't.

It had to be done, and if the Capitol wouldn't see justice done, he would.

[callmecharles]

"Sounds easy enough." He sighed but it was clear to both of them that such a task was much easier said then done.

"Just like back home...except there's people watching and I'm not a freak anymore."

One small bright spot in an otherwise doomed situation.

[the_marshal]

"An' yer not alone," Wyatt pointed out. "I'll be there. An' dependin' on whether er not the mentors are comin' back, Max will too."

They hadn't spoken about it, but Wyatt didn't doubt for a moment that Max would back him up if asked.

(Even thought it might be wiser if he didn't, given what had happened to him to the last time.)

[callmecharles]

That was a small comfort at least. Wyatt seemed alright for a grown up. Kind of like the guys in those old westerns his dad would fall asleep watching on Christmas.

"Is Max like...are you guys...a thing?" Orc blurted out disgracefully.

[the_marshal]

A... thing.

Wyatt had never quite been sure what to call it even before it had gotten all switched around on him. He'd heard the term 'boyfriend' tossed around by other tributes and citizens alike, but it didn't taste right to him. Lovers certainly got to the heart of the issue, but he wasn't sure it was a term Max would appreciate.

He chewed over it for a beat, and decided to let it lie as Orc said it.

"Ya got'a problem with it?" he asked, moving on to something more important than the labeling of it. If Orc intended to toss a stink over it, it was best they got it out of the way now.

[callmecharles]

The aggressive answer was more honest then anything Howard had ever said on the matter. He shook his head no.

"My dad used to say stuff about guys like you...but I'm thinking maybe my dad wasn't as smart as I thought he was when I was little." He'd fought along side a girl who liked girls after all and she was braver then anything he'd ever seen his dad do.

But it did cut to the heart of things didn't it?

"What's it like?"

[the_marshal]

Guys like you.

Wyatt's eyes twitched, narrowing slightly as a muscle jumped in his jaw. Preparing himself for whatever insults were coming....

But then he paused, watching Orc carefully as he went on. Relaxing, just slightly.

"...What do'ya mean?" he asked, uncertain as to what Orc was asking for.

[callmecharles]

Oh good, because Orc was uncertain as to what he was asking for too.

"I mean like...is it different from...I dunno caring about girls?" Not that he had ever had more then lust for most girls his age.

His face was getting red now, flustered just from bringing up the subject as vague as it was.

[the_marshal]

"...Love's love, son," Wyatt told him, stumbling over the word only slightly. It was true to him, he knew that, and he felt no shame in it... but he knew now that it wasn't quite the same for Max. "I way I see it, no matter different the outsides might be, it's the person ya care about - the stuff that makes them who they are. That's true whatever they are."

[callmecharles]

Orc nodded, starring at Wyatt as if he was some sage from whom wisdom flowed like a breeze through the empty cave that was Orc's head.

"And so you and Max care about each other like that? Are you gonna get married or whatever?" Sounding so much like a child instead of a teenager, up till the "Whatever" part.

[the_marshal]

The communicator slipped between Wyatt's fingers, clattering loudly against the table.

"Orc..." His voice was suddenly rough, tight as his throat closed around the word. He scooped up the little device and struggled to clear his throat, Adam's Apple lurching as he swallowed. "That ain't up to me."

[callmecharles]

That puzzled Orc even more, was he in trouble.

"Charles." He corrected mumbling the word "What do you mean it's not up to you? Is he the only one who gets to decide stuff?"

He was about to ask if that meant Wyatt was the "Mom" of the relationship, because in his house his father made all the big choices. But Orc was not in fact that stupid and expected such a question would earn him a black eye.

[the_marshal]

"It means..." he started, but trailed off, not sure what he really meant. "It ain't somethin' somebody can jus' answer out'a the blue. It's complicated."

Even if such a thing were allowed here - unlike his own time, where this sort of thing would have gotten him strung up from some lonely tree - he was fairly certain it wouldn't ever be something high on Max's list of things to do.

The man was already married. To someone he truly loved.

"That's a choice between two people. Somethin' they both gotta want."

[callmecharles]

It was sounding more complicated the more he talked about it. But he was willing to try and sort it out.

"So what do you want then?" That was what he was getting at wasn't it? Orc shifted uncomfortably in his seat still getting used to being able to feel such gentle pressure like the back of his chair or the cushion under his backside.

[the_marshal]

Unfortunately for Orc, Wyatt wasn't. These were words that he'd pushed down deep, telling himself to forget them, and he wasn't about to go digging them back up now to some half-strange boy.

"Is there some reason yer askin' all this?" he asked, pinning Orc with a sharp look. "There somethin' you wanna talk about?"